FILE – Preschoolers at the amily Flex Early Education Center in Denver, Colorado.(Photo by Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)

With the 4th of July in the rear-view mirror, the next ads we will see stuffed in the paper and strewn across the stores is the Sale that was the bane of my youth, and that still, upon seeing as an adult, makes me resentful: Back to School sales. Back to School? I always felt summer vacation had just started, and mom’s scurrying to stock up on pencil boxes? Now it’s hot pink backpacks and zebra-striped binders for tweens, and at age 66 it still depresses me. But a story I read recently perks me right up.

It’s about a nursery school focused on teaching kids to read better, located smack in the middle of a nursing home. Or senior facility, if you like. The premise is to match kids with senior adults for mutual benefit; the kid learns to read better, the senior is enlivened by positive interaction with children, and the inter-generational benefits abound. A kid has a bunch more grandparents, elders not only feel useful, they ARE useful. The primary grade classroom is right in the center of the ground floor, using as few dividers as possible between generations. I don’t know, but they might even have lunch together. Gramps, I’ll trade my apple for your applesauce!

It made me think how this might be the start of a movement. There are other productive elders that could enjoy kids in their midst–even if it shakes things up a bit. I know of a teacher’s union building chock full of retired teachers. I wonder if they have any common space that could be a classroom? An under-used workout room or a dusty parlor could work. Think of the wealth of teaching experience surrounding the children in that classroom. Think of the positive press for a building of union teachers who enjoy doing free supplemental teaching. Do any businesses have any unused space?

It might be hard for some to believe, given recent frustration with the nastiness of the politics there, that Congress is “more religious” than the country as a whole.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that one in five U.S. adults do not identify with a particular religion. They classify themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” But only one member of Congress — and the first member of Congress to do so — publicly identified herself as “none” when asked her religion. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., is religiously unaffiliated, according too CQ Roll Call.

There are 10 other members of Congress among the 533 sworn in Jan. 3 who do not specify a religious affiliation. That’s under 2 percent — while about 20 percent of the general population don’t. There were only six unaffiliated in the previous Congress.

Of course, secularists, atheists and humanists, would point out that it’s not surprising at all to them that the relative piety of Congress goes hand in hand with sour relations, uncompromising attitudes and vicious smears.

Others faith firsts in the 113th include the first Buddhist to serve in the Senate, Rep. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and the first Hindu in either chamber, Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard. And Muslims (with two members) are now represented more proportionately compared with general population in Congress than previously.

Fifty years ago, almost three-quarters of Congress was Protestant. Protestants lost eight seats in Congress in the last election, but still take 56 percent of the seats.

Catholics gained most — picking up seven seats for a total of 163, Pew reports. They now make up 30 percent of Congress, while accounting for 22 percent of U.S. adults.

Jewish members now hold 33 seats — six seats fewer than they did in the 112th Congress — yet they still make up 6 percent of Congress and only 2 percent of the general adult population. Mormons continue to hold 15 seats, or 3 percent, the same as before. They make up 2 percent of the general adult population.

A denomination greatly underrepresented in Congress is Pentecostal. It includes a much higher number of U.S. Protestants — 20 times that suggested by the one Pentecostal member of Congress. While Episcopalians are only 2 percent of the adult population, they hold more than 7 percent of seats in Congress.

Things are rarely as they seem, perhaps especially when religion and politics are involved. At least that’s what’s continually occurred to me as I have reflected during this “Fortnight for Freedom” which U.S. bishops have asked American Catholics to participate in June 21 through the Fourth of July.

The fortnight of “study, prayer and reflection,” supposedly flowing from Pope Benedict XVI’s speech about religious liberty to American Bishops visiting Rome earlier this year, was more immediately caused by some bishops’ sense of the need for a dramatic response to the recent Health and Human Services directive that Catholic institutions such as hospitals and universities must include coverage for contraception in their insurance plans. I say “supposedly” about the Pope’s exhortation because I speculate, without any evidence, that it was in part or even largely written by the small group of bishops and their lay associates that later issued “Our First, Most Cherished Freedom.” For this lengthy “Statement on Religious Liberty” was not the work of the entire body of U.S. bishops, though they later approved it, but of a committee of episcopal higher-ups, including Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput and some nationally prominent and politically conservative lay advisers. It should, of course, be noted that Benedict himself has indeed long been concerned about threats to religious liberty, whether for Christians in places like Iraq, Egypt and China, or for those in the increasingly secularized countries of the modern West.

In this country, the issue of religious liberty – that is, the free exercise of religion for individuals and for religious institutions – has also long been a matter of serious concern. That is why it has been debated and adjudicated throughout our nation’s history. And why the Catholic bishops are today rightly concerned about possible government encroachments on that free exercise.

Newly appointed Archbishop of Denver Samuel J. Aquila talks with Catholic Charities Samaritan House cook Steven Scott, right, at the Samaritan House in downtown Denver Tuesday, May 29, 2012.

I have written public “letters” of welcome to Denver’s past two Catholic archbishops (Cardinal Francis Stafford and Charles Chaput). They never acknowledged receipt, but I believe that what I wrote spoke for many area Catholics. So let me now write a similar form of welcome to newly appointed Archbishop Samuel Aquila.

Unlike his predecessors, Aquila had served previously in Denver and recently said it is “the place I had called home for most of my life.” Yet I don’t think that I personally ever met the man. At most we may have exchanged quick greetings at some public event. Still, I’ve heard good things about him — above all that he’s personable. As one young man who met him on his recent visit to Denver put it: “He’s cool — very mellow and cool and down to earth.”

That he is and will continue to be a very “conservative” (he’d say “orthodox”) Catholic simply goes without saying given the pattern of Vatican appointments since the papacy of John Paul II. In his administrative work here in Denver (and presumably also in his role as bishop in North Dakota), he followed the pattern set by his predecessors (who were then his bosses) as a strict believer in and enforcer of the current Vatican line on Catholic teachings and church disciplines.

Where is your moral compass pointing? What are your social values? Hark will explore faith, morals, ethics and character at the intersection of religion ethics, culture, politics, media, science, education, economics and philosophy. At times this blog will alert readers to breaking news and trends. At times it will attempt to look more deeply into intriguing subjects. Hark means to listen attentively, and we will, as readers talk back to the news.